


i was born with blood on my hands

by quadrille



Category: BioShock Infinite
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-01
Updated: 2015-11-01
Packaged: 2018-04-29 10:56:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5124914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quadrille/pseuds/quadrille
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Booker DeWitt is a ticking clockwork man who is very, very good at what he does. Elizabeth's observations on his capabilities.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i was born with blood on my hands

She’s astonished at the violence.

Booker DeWitt is a ticking clockwork man who is very, very good at what he does: when he fights, he turns into an automaton, just like the mechanical presidents he’s cutting down. Training the sights of his rifle with smooth, fluid movements, and an easy grace that would be beautiful if it weren’t so awful. He grinds his skyhook into the meat of a guard’s throat, flesh and blood splattered across his cheek.

They take refuge in a bombed-out house and light a single candle indoors, hidden behind barricades and shutters, where the prowling soldiers can’t see the light through the windows. Running cold water into a bowl, Booker bows his head (another baptism) and rinses his grimed face. She’s picking pieces of brain and bone out of his hair, and Elizabeth steels herself against the sight, making herself think of Florence Nightingale, of the battlefield nurses she’d read about with their stiff upper lips and iron-steady hands.

He doesn’t have time to shave; the five o’clock shadow creeps further and further across his face.

The casual violence means every twitch of muscle is designed to enact the most devastation. He makes an art of it, but this is no art—he destroys and destroys, like the way she used to paint, once upon a time. The man’s hands are split at the knuckles, bound in bandages, bruised, stitched together with thread and Vigor. (He’s been drinking too much whiskey and quaffing too much Murder of Crows; she finds a black feather growing at the back of his neck, barbs poking through the skin, and she plucks it out with one sharp motion. He hisses in pain, then her palm smooths over the wound, pressing against it with a cold rag, dulling the ache.)

But then, he’s also capable of tenderness.

The careful way he buttons up the back of her dress, his eyes averted; the methodical preparation of food, breaking open cans with faded labels from the land below; fingertips ghosting across a cut on her forehead, pressing gently with the ministration of a Pinkerton trained in first aid; how he rolls away from her at night, sharing body heat but careful not to touch the young woman nor trespass propriety, a solid wall of spine behind her.

He’s tearing down this entire city and carving a path of carnage in their wake, but he’s doing it to keep her safe. And as Elizabeth watches his hands hovering over a guitar, gently running across the strings, a warbling note ringing out into the basement, she considers the fact that it’s one of the few times she’s seen those hands used for anything but pain, and the empty cage behind her heart warms.

Perhaps there's hope for him yet.


End file.
